"Expelliarmus!"

I hear Tonks shout. Deciding that practice for today is over I quickly launch 3 spells in succession to a chair behind her which promptly opens up and attaches to her arms. A quick disarming spell myself and I walk over towards her undoing my transfiguration along the way.

After she gets settled, I quickly say, "Good practice today, do you want to grab a snack from the kitchen?"

"Sure, it's on the way to my common room."

"You mean right across from your dorms?" I respond while rolling my eyes.

She doesn't say anything after that as we walk. This is our fourth practice session and I can tell she's getting quite frustrated. So far she hasn't been able to hit me once, but we've both improved significantly from practicing together. Tonks is the perfect partner for my training because transfiguration is my worst subject, while it's her best. She is far better than me at transfiguration but has little imagination while using it in combat. She's slow to think of creative defenses and surprise attacks, but even when she comes up with them, they are hardly ever executed correctly. I've been pushing her to improve this skill by testing my own limits with transfiguration. I'll undo any of her attacks and sneak attacks through her defenses by using illusions. She still hasn't figured it out yet and since we are no longer getting the same level of progress, I decided to share this skill.

As we reach the painted bowl of fruit, I quickly tickle the pear, which giggles when a door handle appears. I open to door and guide Tonks in when an elf pops up and asks, "hows may we be helping you?" And I ask for, "some tea and snacks, thanks." We're quickly ushered to a seat on the kitchen counter and a pot of tea with two glasses sitting there. House elves are amazing, I've never gotten over how useful they are. Once tea has been served, Tonks has still been really quiet the whole way, so I thought I'd lead the conversation.

"Have you figured it out yet?"

"Figured what out?" She questions me with a suspicious look.

"How I keep beating you?" I respond quickly while putting my hands up in a surrender position.

"No." She grumbles under her breath.

"I'm using illusions.. I hide common objects around the room and use illusions to hide them, then I transfigure the objects to attack you." I reveal quietly.

She pauses for a moment then says, "Damn, it was something so obvious." She hesitates for a second before asking, "How good are you really?"

I take a moment to answer, not at all planning to tell the full truth, so I say, "transfiguration is my worst wand based subject, and so far I've only used that and basic charms like simple illusions and animations… If I were going all out, I probably would only use transfiguration on defense and as distractions."

I can tell my answer shocks her, so I take a sip of tea and eat a couple finger sandwiches before saying, "Let's go" when I notice she's not eating or drinking anything. She doesn't say anything but follows me out of the kitchens while I thank the elves. We walk across to the entrance of the Hufflepuff common room and I stop her before she enters and say, "same time next week?" And she looks back confused, "I thought you wouldn't want to practice anymore. You've been going easy on me the whole time."

I quickly explain, "No, I've been practicing a different skill against you. You're extremely talented at transfiguration and I'm learning a lot about it from you. But I told you this today so you can get better and we both can continue to improve."

She seemed quite happy that I was also benefiting from our practice sessions. I wish her a short goodbye before I start walking back to my own common room. Along the way, I think of the progress I've made over the last month. Outside training with Tonks, I've decided to try to recreate an idea from multiple sources, super-speed. I was thinking the Flash, but I doubted that I could recreate a similar effect. What I was hoping was to create a new form of apparition that I could break through anti-apparition wards. This project was going quite well, I learned apparition over the summer and was able to move quickly and somewhat quietly. However I noticed that the time to teleport was actually quite long. In combat, there would be little use because you don't disappear or reappear immediately. Since magical sensing is not a unique skill, apparation is quite predictable in combat. Not to mention that even a split second loss of concentration and you leave pieces of yourself behind. Once I realized the limitations, I tried improving the spell with limited progress and decided to try and form my own method. Then I thought of the teleportation technique in Naruto and thought I could recreate that effect.

This led into researching portkeys. It was easier to make a portkey than I thought it would be. However it was limited on the locations you could send it to. The farther away, the more difficult it would be to create and the longer it would take to arrive. The result of my research was to create a rune sequence that would enable instant transportation between two rune sequences. It took weeks to create the runes, but I finally decided they were ready, so I'm going to sneak out of the castle tomorrow to buy the items that I wish to engrave into. Since my main focus for creating this was combat, I decided to engrave the runes on a pair goblin steel knives. I had scouted out Borgin & Burkes over the summer under a disillusionment charm and saw a nice pair of goblin steel daggers with no enchantments. The cost was an astronomical 1000 galleons each, which in this day and age could've bought a suburban home. I had looted the room of requirement before leaving last year and had been selling a bunch of items over the summer. I caught a break in the jewelry department because apparently people have been extremely forgetful over the years. I was able to sell 3 diamond necklaces and 2 bracelets for 2500 galleons. I've been saving up money because I know how valuable it is in this society so I have an account with the goblins that has a few thousand galleons in it. I'll probably be emptying most of the vault for these knives and the other items needed. There's a special carving set at the runecrafting store that I'll need in order to complete this project, but I was always going to have to buy it. Another issue that I was running into was that I needed an extremely powerful sacrifice to power the runes. I had decided to kill two birds with one literal stone and use the philosophers stone. I would destroy the stone in order to power the rune sequence which will last forever in an extremely powerful weapon. Using the dust leftover from destroying the stone, I will add it to a mental health potion which will hopefully be super charged enough to help the Longbottoms.

While my plan was ambitious, I had a feeling it would work out quite well. I have spent a few hours going through the protections around the stone and have found that the protections were insignificant. Surprisingly, I was starting to believe that I had some slight divination powers, however it wasn't in a traditional sense. I wouldn't see anything of the future or dream about anything, but magic would sometimes give me feelings on what I should do. It was an internal magic eight ball and it was screaming that this is the path I need to take. In a way, this feeling is very scary because it makes me wonder if people like Voldemort or Grindelwald got these signals from magic. However, the magic seemed to comfort me, it was like a reassuring pat on the back that said this is the right thing to do. I've been trying to reach further into this connection but have made no progress. Either way, this plan is going forward and my magic is telling me it will work.

I reach back to my room and prepare to steal the stone tonight. I'll be sneaking out tomorrow to go get the ingredients I need, so now seems like the best time. I decided to create a fake stone that I'll store some of the dust from the destroyed stone so there's traces of the real thing when people look. I found a beautiful red stone near the lake and kept it for this purpose. I grab the fake stone and put a disillusionment spell on me as I head out to the third floor corridor.

Once I reach the door, I feel the detection ward on the door. I had researched wards and ward breaking a bit over the years at Hogwarts and found something quite interesting. Wards usually need to be tied to other wards in order for the effect to be useful because people can change the feeling of their own magic to fool a single ward. However if multiple wards are tied together, it's impossible for this trick to work because they have different magical properties. I found out about this skill because it was mentioned in a cursebreaking book, but it was mentioned as an extremely advanced technique. Since I came from a world without magic, I am extremely sensitive to the feeling of magic and can clearly feel the ward and how to shape my magic. Dumbledore must've believed that anyone that could sneak through a ward wouldn't be stopped by layering multiple wards anyway so there's no point because students don't have this ability. He failed to account for the one exception in the school. I slip through the ward and find a sleeping Fluffy over the trap door. I decide to not even bother waking him up to move him and place a music charm on the doorknob. From there it's quite easy to make it to the chess board. A quick incendio and accio get me through the Devil's Snare and key room. I was decent at chess in my previous life so I take the spot of the king and just play the game naturally. It's tough, but the animation can only be so smart. They eventually make a mistake and surprisingly they surrender right after. The riddle room gives me no trouble at all so I'm quickly through the fire surrounding the door.

Once I'm finally in front of the mirror of erised, I quickly give myself a prayer that my theory will work. Since my goal isn't to technically use the stone, but to destroy it, I should be able to retrieve it from the mirror.

I glance up at the mirror and the sight I see doesn't even surprise me one bit. I'm turned away, hunched over a desk drawing some sort of rune sequence. I notice there's a cloak shimmering to the right and a stone shining on the left. Then my image turns around to face me and I can finally see myself. I'm older, both physically and mentally. I look tired, but also relieved, like all my problems are about to disappear. Then I look down and see a wand in my hand, but it's not my own. I finally piece the puzzle together, and it's obvious that I'm creating something that requires a sacrifice of the deathly hallows. I'm dying of curiosity, so I get a little closer to see the runes, but my image in the mirror holds out his other hand. In it is a shining red stone, my mirror image winks and tucks it into my pocket. I feel the weight in my pocket which shifts my attention away from the mirror.

I pick up the stone and stare at it for a bit. In order to have gotten it, I truly needed to not want to use it. I raise my wand to the stone and silently, but powerfully think "reducto." The stone crumbles to dust in my hand. It still radiates power, but it's destroyed. I take about two thirds of the dust and put it into a vial while taking out my fake stone. I transfigure the stone to look like the real thing then hollow out a bit of the stone to throw the last third of the ashes into the fake. I glance back at the mirror and hold the fake out. My image grabs it and tucks it into their pocket as it disappears from my hand.

I make my way back to my room and finally lay down in bed. I'm utterly exhausted but glad everything went to plan. I'll have to check in again at the end of the year when Voldemort makes his move but magic guided me correctly this time.

A/N: Here's the next chapter, I hope you enjoy. Next up will be using the stone to create the weapon. I'm thinking like Minato's hiraishin jutsu. My character will take a lot of inspiration from Naruto. Let me know what you think in the comments and please like/follow.